


Snapshots of an Alpha Named Laura

by lannisnow



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-15
Updated: 2012-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 14:09:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannisnow/pseuds/lannisnow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He gets three questions. That's it. Three questions, three snapshots, three chances to know what she was like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snapshots of an Alpha Named Laura

**Author's Note:**

> I recommend you listen to Safe & Sound by Taylor Swift feat. The Civil Wars while reading, as it was my inspiration to write a fic about Laura Hale, and I have been listening to it on repeat for the past three hours while I sobbed until my eyes were red and sore. Enjoy.

Stiles knows she was important. Whenever Stiles mentions her, Derek goes rigid. There’s even a click in Stiles’s jaw from the time Derek punched him. It was his fault. He shouldn’t have kept asking. Stiles would have done the same if someone asked him about his mother like he asked Derek about Laura. “The next time you ask about her,” the memory of Derek’s voice speaks, “I’ll kill you.”

So when Stiles slips his head into the guest bedroom and finds Derek singing his goddaughter to sleep, he thinks he’s getting his first glimpse into this woman who raised Derek Hale.

It’s a lullaby Stiles has never heard before. Deep, low, and not sung perfectly. Derek is off key, and Stiles is not sure if Derek could ever sing. The way he’s sitting, though, shoulders slouched, eyes trained on the strawberry-blond four year old, whose half-hooded blue eyes read nothing but bliss, tells Stiles more than he thinks he’s supposed to know about how Derek grew up.

Stiles stays there, leaning against the door frame, until he sees the little one’s eyes fall shut and Derek’s voice finally stops. They’re both still, watching the little girl for any movements, seeing if she’ll wake up. Derek stands when it’s safe, and makes his way out the door, brushing past Stiles with only a little hostility.

They make it to the living room. Derek sits on a chair and Stiles takes the couch.

“Three questions.”

Derek’s voice startles Stiles a bit. He tilts his head and narrows his eyes a little, trying to understand. “What? And that doesn’t count.”

“Laura.”

Stiles has to swallow back the “ _Oh_ ,” that threatens to slip out. He stares for a long minute. “Can I ask why without you taking it as a question?” he tries, testing the waters a bit.

“You never ask about her again. You never mention her again. You never _think_ about her again. Three questions. That’s all you get.”

There are a million questions that flood to Stiles at once. He stares at Derek and tries to sort them, tries to wade through the useless ones, and the ones that are too broad and Derek wouldn’t answer. It’s silence until he can think of one that’s good enough.

“What did- what did she look like? Before she was all covered in dirt and cut in half? And that only counts as one question.”

\--

It’s a sunny day, beautiful, with the lightest wind that just barely tousles her hair.

Laura’s twenty years old, sitting on the edge of the lake. She’s dressed casually, lightly, for the day. A small t-shirt inches up her side when she stretches and stands up. Her jeans are covered in sand.

“You’re not supposed to come to the beach in jeans, Laura,” a fourteen year old Derek protests coming out of the water and shaking his hair dry. Laura smiles at him, teeth threatening and playful.

“If I’m not getting into the water, what does it matter?” She smiles a little wider and hugs her brother, resting her chin on the top of his head. They stay still for a long time. Derek’s arms are strong around her waist, and Laura’s arms rest comfortably around his shoulders.

“Let go of me, you’re getting me all wet and you smell like wet dog,” she says, finally, releasing him from her grip and pressing a kiss to his forehead. He raises an eyebrow and shrugs at her. “Doesn’t help you’re going through puberty-”

“We’re in public. Come on, Laura, don’t embarrass me.” It should stress her out how much Derek tries to hide his smiles. She’s seen them more and more lately, though. Moving across the country helped him. It helped him a lot. Florida makes him look much more relaxed than California ever did.

“Sorry. I forget you don’t want people to know you’re a fourteen year old boy.”

Derek scowls at her and she playfully pushes him away, gives him the towel she’d kept folded up next to her, and tells him to wash up so they can go back to their apartment.

“Is that your sister?” she hears one of the boys Derek’s walking with whisper under his breath. “The one with the brown hair you were just hugging?”

“Yes,” Derek answers. He’s more stern with these friends of his. One word answers and curt replies that seem too robotic and practiced.

“She’s hot. I’d do her.”

Laura stifles a laugh in the back of her hand when Derek pulls back his scrawny arm and punches his friend harder than he should in the shoulder.

\--

“Two more,” Derek finishes with.

Stiles stares openly at him, unsure, almost too timid to ask another question. He nods, carefully, and thinks of another one. Again, they swarm and spill into the front of his mind. He runs a hand over his arm and thinks hard. He’s only got these two more questions.

“What was she like after the fire?”

Derek actually hesitates with this one, staring at Stiles’s face like he’s joking. “You were there,” he answers defensively. “You saw us.”

“I was six, sitting in a cop car. I didn’t know what I was seeing. I don’t remember anything but fire... And you.”

\--

“Get over here! _Get over here!_ ” her voice shrieks. Derek runs over, clutching her, burying his head in her stomach and sobbing into her shirt. She’s frantically grabbing him, fingers digging into his jacket.

“What about uncle Peter-”

“ _No_ ,” she whimpers out. When Derek looks up at her, he sees hands on her shoulders, and she has a hand over her mouth. Her face is soaked, and she reaches down and gathers enough strength to lift him up. He’s ten years old, too old for this, but he doesn’t protest, not one bit. He wraps his arms around her neck and legs around her middle and sobs into her shoulder.

“They left you everything, Laura,” the cop is saying. Derek can hear the man come around so he’s standing in front of them. “I wish you would have come later. They’re... Collecting the- What’s left of-” he stutters and Derek looks up from his sister’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I wish there was something we could have done.”

Laura’s face is blank. He doesn’t remember when she stopped crying. Derek searches and searches for emotions. His parents taught him how to _feel_ them, kind of, but he can’t even do that. Laura just stands there, tears drying on her face, arm snug around Derek’s lower back, staring at this cop - the sheriff - and nods. Derek tries hard to emulate her, to stop, but his jaw shakes a little, and he trembles just the slightest in her arms.

“There’s the smallest chance that they’ll try to take him,” the sheriff says, rubbing his hand over his face. Derek sees the glint of a wedding ring. A faint emotion sparks up in his belly. Didn’t the sheriff just lose his wife? Yes, he did. Derek remembers now. The emotion he feels intensifies. This man understands. No one else does.

Laura’s voice snaps him back to reality. “I’d kill them,” she retaliates. “He’s my brother-”

“And you’re sixteen. But you’re well off. The money they left is more than enough incentive for the state to let you keep him. You’re a straight A student, you’ve never been in trouble, everyone here will fight for you if it comes to taking it to court.”

“They won’t put him in a foster home.” Her words are feral, and her tone is biting. Derek doesn’t bother thinking about it. Laura wouldn’t let him go. He’s not scared there is even a possibility.

“We’ll try our best to make sure that doesn’t happen,” the sheriff says back. He turns around and watches body bags being zipped up. Derek feels his lunch churn in his stomach and looks away.

Just inside the cop car, there’s a little boy with a buzz cut and dark circles under his eyes looking back at him. The boy, must be at least three, four years younger than he is, raises his hand and waves.

Derek glares and turns his head away, wriggles out of Laura’s arms, and stands by her side, tall and strong as he can. He juts out his jaw. He can feel the warmth from the fire that has died down still coming from the ruins of his home.

He can’t cry anymore. He has to be like Laura. She’s all he has left.

\--

“Last one,” Derek reminds Stiles with an abrupt end.

“That’s it?”

Derek stares at him, eyebrows jumping a little in a silent question.

“I asked about after the fire, and that’s all you’re giving me?”

“That’s what happened,” Derek retorts, eyes narrowing. “If you want more, you can ask for it. But that’s it. You have one more, and then we’re never talking about this again.”

“No, that’s okay. Can I sleep on this last question?”

Derek stares at him. For a few seconds, Stiles is sure he’s going to be forced to give a question. He isn’t. “Tomorrow night, after I put the kid to bed.” Stiles nods. That’s longer than he was expecting, anyway.

He frets about it when he sleeps. Derek is motionless and constant beside him, his breath steady. It’s that sound, a smooth breath of air, in and out, that Stiles concentrates on. After a few minutes, he’s finally asleep.

All day he thinks about his question. When he’s throwing poptarts in the toaster for the girl, turning the TV to a cartoon show, taking his shower, the question is at the back of his mind. He could ask a million things. This is a big deal. This is a big deal for him. For Derek. He’s being let into this space that he’s never even been allowed to think about without getting a threat of a fist to his jaw or teeth on his throat. And it’s been really rare that Derek has really even given him threats. Lately, that is. Not after they kind of started to live together unofficially.

Lydia calls sometime in the afternoon and asks to speak to her daughter. She apologizes over and over for the short notice, almost crying into the phone when Stiles says he’ll get her on the other end. He listens to them talk and smiles when he’s handed back the phone.

“It’ll only be a few more days. I’m so sorry. I told them I couldn’t just leave on a whim-”

“Lydia, it’s fine. She’s doing great. She barely even notices you’re gone.”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry. Again.”

They say quick goodbyes and Stiles goes back to playing with a tea set with a four year old girl.

Derek comes back from whatever-he-does in the afternoons around six. Enough time for them to order out and eat dinner before they catch a couple shows and decide it’s bedtime for the little one.

No song is necessary. The kid passes off sprawled over Derek’s lap.

“You think she’s a-” Stiles gestures for words. Derek shakes his head no.

“It’s hard to tell, but I don’t see it,” he whispers, leaning against the door frame next to Stiles. “Her dad’s one, her mom’s not. She takes after Lydia more than she does Jackson. In every way, I think.”

Stiles nods. They stare at her for a little while, watch as she twists and curls into a ball.

“Did you love her?”

Derek turns to look at Stiles. He looks confused, but it’s barely noticeable. He doesn’t have to ask what it was for, his knitted eyebrows do the talking for him.

“That’s my last question. Did you love her?”

\--

“Derek!” Laura’s tone is more than playful. Giddy, maybe. Derek runs into the living room and sees her holding a letter in her hand.

“It’s from the hospital!” she says, shifting and smiling at the paper in her hands. “They think they have progress on uncle Peter!”

Derek’s not so sure he likes this. This isn’t a good thing. This means-

“I need to go to Beacon Hills,” Laura says, eyes snapping to Derek. She smiles. They’ve been in New York for at least three years now. Derek kind of lost count. But this was really the longest they’d ever been somewhere before. He knows that at twenty years old, he should really find somewhere else to live, and stop living with his sister, but she’s the closest thing he has to home. Wherever she goes, he goes.

“I’ll come with.”

“You have work, and you just got off vacation. It’s fine! I’ll take mine and go see uncle Peter to see how he’s doing. It’ll be fine.”

Derek knows that’s the end decision. There’s no discussing with Laura. There is only dictatorship. She has the last word, and Derek never bothers fighting it.

A week of packing and frantic plan-making goes much faster than Derek would like it to. It’s nine in the morning and Laura’s humming with excitement at the air port. She leans forward and brushes her nose to Derek’s. Something they do as a pack. He kisses her cheek and she hugs him wildly. She’s more excited than he’s ever seen her. But he knows what this means for her.

Answers.

“Call me when you land,” he says, watching her go to the terminal. She smiles and waves over her shoulder. “Text me, at least.”

“I will. Don’t fret too much, little brother. I’ll see you in a week.”

He gets his call. She’s tired, a little dopey off the alcohol she’s taken. She hates flying. He knows this. It makes him smile when she groans in his ear about the snoring of the man next to her the whole flight. At least something had caught her attention besides the thoughts of crashing.

The next day he gets another call. She saw uncle Peter, but he wasn’t doing as well as she was hoping. His eyes flicker, she says, but that’s it. She sounds disappointed. Derek doesn’t blame her. He consoles her as best he can. “Give it some time,” he says. Laura sighs into the phone. He can see her nod.

Three days go by without a call or a text. Three turns to four and Derek enters panic mode. He sends forty seven texts in the span of half an hour. He calls twenty eight times in just as much time. There is no answer.

He flies out to Beacon Hills the next day.

That’s when he hears the story of the body.

Half of it, they found. The bottom half.

Derek doesn’t claim it. He doesn’t do anything about it. When he sees a teenage boy with a buzz cut and a dopey friend who smells like one of his own kind running around on his property, he gets angry. He throws a piece of plastic and medicine at them, tells them to screw off and starts looking again. Looking for his sister. Because even after the fire, they still own this land, and this burnt out shell of a home. This is still theirs. This is where she should be, no matter where they found the other half of the body. Somewhere around the house.

He finds it.

It’s Laura.

He finds Laura.

He tracked the scent almost a mile out. It’s mixed with teenage boy and the distinct smell of _wolf_. But it’s Laura. Her face is in shock, eyes open. She looks alive. Derek sits next to her, stares down at half of what used to be his alive and beautiful sister.

Derek manages to bury her like she taught him how to bury a werewolf.

It’s not as hard as he thinks it would be. Her body is naked and cold. He wonders where her clothes are, where her phone is buried.

Loss was never easy. He juts his chin out and swallows back the same feelings he had when he was ten years old. Only, there’s no shoulder here he can hide his face this time. There’s no one looking, though, either.

It hits him that he is entirely alone.

It hits him much later that he doesn’t have to be.

\--

Derek is completely silent. Stiles stares, waits for an answer.

“Yes,” Derek says finally.

That’s it? That’s his answer? Three questions, three chances, and all he gets is a yes for his last one?

Derek looks at him with such an unfamiliar gaze, it takes a long time to register just how vulnerable it is. His eyes are glazed over, his shoulders are fallen, his hands are balled up in his pockets, and Stiles has never seen anything more heart-wrenching.

“Thank you for answering them,” Stiles says. Just as quickly as that look had come across Derek’s face, it is gone. His jaw is set again, and his head nods in a respectable manner.

“We never mention her again,” Derek says. A confirmation. A treaty.

“Cross my heart.”

Derek nods again and starts off for his bedroom. Stiles follows.


End file.
